The eighth edition of Trescon’s Big CIO Show & Award recently concluded in Mumbai. Through this show, the organisers are trying to spread awareness about cyber security and data management among the CIO community. The day started with a brief introduction on global business events and consulting firm Trescon’s activities.
Trescon’s CEO, Mohd Saleem drew attention of the audience on their recent activities. Trescon has already done several events in other countries including Thailand, Hong Kong and Mauritius. One of the interesting developments in case of Trescon events have been getting on board robots to host. Most probably they will introduce the same practice in India too.
Knowledge sessions
The panellists in the first session talked on ‘Evolution of Customer Experience’. The basic idea was to highlight – how IT is going to be proactive. Pooraan Jaiswal, Group CIO, Tribhuvandas Bhimji Zaveri; Sanjay Mahajan, Chief Information Officer, Satin Creditcare Network; Vishal Sinha, President, CIO and CISO, TranzLease Holdings (I); Steph Owen, Senior Director APAC Success, Zendesk; and Milind Khamkar, Group CIO, Supermax participated in the discussion.
The team delved into the topics such as predictive analytics used to improve CX; ensuring seamless omni-channel experiences; IoT customer experience and improving CX with AI; AI moves from – personalised to predictive; and convenience is the new customer service and CX strategy.
In the second session, Meenakshi Wadhwa, Regional Sales Head, SAP CONCUR made a technical presentation on ‘Intelligent Spend Management’. She highlighted various aspects of SAP CONCUR’s travel expense management programme.
In the third session, Shashank Selal, Cyber Security Account Manager, Darktrace, delivered his technical presentation on growing cyber-attacks for ransom. Astonishingly, they have found more than 63,500 in-progress cyber threats. He explained how Darktrace detects and analyses the threats.
Risk management was explained by Ashutosh Mishra, Chief Risk Officer, NABARD at another session. He stressed that ‘risk management’ is integral to the modern CIO’s role. He concluded saying that today’s CIOs should have comprehensive understanding of risks.
The fifth session focused on the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in improving cybersecurity. Panellists such as Paritosh Basu, Senior Professor, School of Business Management, NMIMS University and Ex-CFO, Reliance Communications; Mansi Thapar, Head Security—CISO, Jaquar Group; Brijesh Ammanath, CIO—Trade and Working Capital, Barclays; and Avadhut Parab, Global CIO, Wockhardt delivered their deep insights in this session.
The concluding points of the discussion were: AI and ML are growing very rapidly, consequently new applications are coming up. Using them cybersecurity can be tightened, and lots of cyber-attacks can be prevented through their applications. So, every organisation needs to draw a roadmap for its cybersecurity approach using AI and ML.
The sixth session consisted of a technical presentation by Steph Owen, Senior Director, APAC Success, Zendesk. She pointed out today there is a gap between what customers are asking and what organisations are providing. The success comes if an organisation can provide what its customers are actually looking for. She explained how Zendesk helps in analysing customers’ data and makes them understand the right demand trend.
The seventh session of the day consisted of a technical presentation by Chintamani Joshi, Watson AI and Data Platform Technical Sales Leader, and IBM Global Markets—Cloud Sales.
He explained in detail how to unlock the value of the accumulated data, and how IBM can help in the process with their advanced tools. He emphasised that unless an organisation follows an organised approach with the available data, it cannot do much with the huge amount of accumulated data.
In the eighth session of the day, there was an awardgiving ceremony. Fifty Trescon awards were given to appreciate valuable contributions of efficient CIO innovators. Also, at the end of the event 50 awards were given to the adroit CIO leaders.
In the ninth session of the day, RAGUL T, Sales Manager, ZOHO Corp spoke on their comprehensive IT management software for all kinds of business needs.
The tenth session of the day consisted of yet another panel discussion in which eminent field personalities including Vipin Gupta, Head of Digital, KFC India; Ritu Mariya, Entrepreneur, Media India – APAC; and Prasanna Lohar, Chief Innovation Officer, DCB Bank; took part.
The session titled ‘Fireside Chat’ delved into the emerging areas including: Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) permits the convergence of physical storage needs onto enterprise servers;
How HCI can reduce the cost and complexity of an organisation’s IT surroundings? HCI has the potential to address both traditional and emerging needs of edge computing because of its operational simplicity and form factor.
Along with the sessions, there were stalls of the IT companies who are aiding CIOs’ activities. The entire event was designed to provide enough time for interaction with the peer CIOs, industry leaders, speakers and IT vendors.
